Pre-placement Planning

The success of a placement will be enhanced by the amount of prior preparation by the practice teacher, the tutor and the student. Too often when supervisors meet together, one hears the familiar stories: hastily arranged, last minute placements; or students being disappointed that they couldn’t get a preferred choice of placement or the aspect of a placement which they wanted. Clearly it is the course’s responsibility to ensure that information on the variety of placements is available, and to suggest an appropriate placement to meet an individual student’s learning needs. We would suggest, however, that poor planning on the part of the course is sometimes condoned by supervisors, who tend to act on the assumption that a preliminary request for a placement will automatically result in a placement being provided. In this chapter the issues that need to be considered in planning a placement will be introduced.